Aimless (4)

In my last year at primary school I was a bit of a rebel. I just didn't treat art seriously, preferring to draw cartoons rather than the serious painting my classmates were doing. I was developing a political mind, my dad's bible was The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist and his beliefs were rubbing off on me. He hated the Tories, so did I. Ted Heath was an idiot and I entitled one cartoon '3 Eyed Ted From Number 10'. Ted Heath with his big toothy laugh and three eyes, one in the middle of his forehead. I didn't know what political point I was making, maybe that the Tories were aliens and should head off back to their own planet. I have a suspicion that Steve Bell somehow saw my cartoon and somehow made a career out of portraying Tories as monsters. Tories are not of this world, though. There's something inhuman about them.

I gained another friend who played David Bowie and Alice Cooper to me and his mum gave me tea. Tea always included baked beans with something, fish fingers or sausages. Tea away from home in my primary school days was accompanied by Blue Peter which I hated and Wacky Races, which I loved.

The Alice Cooper boy also supported West Ham and one day he planned a trip for us. We were to get a Red Bus Rover and visit every London football ground in a day. We got as far as West Ham, Leyton Orient and Arsenal before having to turn back as it was getting late.

The way to West Ham was the 96 bus from Crayford to Woolwich, Woolwich Ferry to Canning Town and 101 bus from there to East Ham Town Hall. Big bovver boys got the 101 on a Saturday and walked through the Woolwich Foot Tunnel. The ferry was much more romantic, second only to the Mersey Ferry with its Gerry & The Pacemakers' romance. Maybe the Woolwich Ferry should make itself more of a tourist attraction by playing some Cockney Rejects or something.

Apart from cheesy Top of the Pops albums with their scantily clad girls next door on the covers and abysmal cover versions of the days hits and my groovy K-Tel albums with the wonders of glam rock and Python Lee Jackson, my first real musical purchase was Tony Orlando & Dawn's Tie a Yellow Ribbon in 1973. OK, it wasn't bought with my earned money and I think my mum had some say in the choice of record as I immediately asked her to take it back to the shop. I was embarrassed by its mawkishness. It is not even one of my guilty pleasures today.

Now and again I heard a tune called Sylvia by Dutch rock band Focus. I loved it and wanted it. I saw a Focus LP in the music shop in Crayford and my mum kindly went to buy it for me. Unfortunately what she bought was not the LP but some complicated Focus sheet music including yodels. Another embarrassing return to a shop ensued.

I didn't make the same mistake twice. I got the Focus compilation album from the same shop and played it to death. And so my prog journey began. Sorry, not very punk, is it?

I started Big School in 1973. Having passed the 11-Plus I had the choice of a grammar or a technical high. There were two other boys in my class who passed their 11-Plus and they were going to the technical high. Having somebody I knew going to the school, including a boy I had been to tea with several times, overrode the opinions of my parents that a grammar school would be better for me. Of course the grammar would have been more suitable but all I could see at the grammar was nobody I knew and lots of girls.

So, without an interest in science or technology or making things, without an interest in Doctor Who or science fiction or Tomorrow's World, I decided to go where the boys went. The boys who were shy of girls.

I turned up on the first day in full school uniform, one of only two boys wearing a cap. The other was called Cheeseman. I was assigned to the same class as Cheeseman and sat next to him as the seating plan was alphabetical. Two little boys with two little caps. It breaks my heart to think of the naivety of it and the potential for piss-taking. But this was a nice school. Bullies were few and far between and didn't pick on me for some time. I settled into certain classes with ease. English, maths and French. Everything else, I hated.

Physics. Nice teacher, yes, into his trad jazz, but what the fuck was Physics all about? And why those tall stools, why the long benches? So uncomfortable. I liked a desk with a chair, a stool and bench were so uncivilised.

Chemistry. Teacher a bit distant. And there we were in the lab again. I didn't belong in a lab with its tall stools and long benches and bunsen burners. I didn't want to be anywhere near fire! Physics, Chemistry, how things worked. I couldn't give a bollock how things worked. Never have done, never will. I want to take it all for granted. I want to turn on the telly and let magic happen. Magic is what it's all about.

Technical Drawing. Dull teacher. And even that fucking desk was too big and not flat! It was on a fucking incline! I didn't want to be on an incline, I wanted to be parallel with the ground. And the pencil was too hard. 2H! I was making indents into the paper. I am just not interested in how things are designed, whether by God or by man. God designed this little green apple. Let God draw the fucking thing. Nuts, bolts, screws, not interested. Give me a pencil and paper and I want to draw silly things. Paper's there to have fun with.

Art. Vicious one-armed teacher. Expert at throwing things at naughty boys. More inclined desks and high stools. And so serious! Yes, I wanted to draw and paint better but I wanted to do what I wanted to do. I wanted to enjoy myself. Who in our class was going to become a serious artist for Christ's sake? Come on, let's be honest. Just how many artists has this school produced in its history? I bet it's none. Then why in God's name were we doing this? We might as well have been having fun, taking the piss out of things. You never know, there might have been some budding cartoonists.

Geography. Big, booming friendly teacher, cricket fanatic. But really. I wasn't interested in the earth and what it's made of and why weather does what it does. Why couldn't it just be a mystery? Couldn't we just be surprised by things? '5, 10 and 21, Winter, Spring and Summer Sun.' That's all I remember from Geography. What about the world's resources and why they're owned by cunts and not by everyone? Why is there poverty, hunger, genocide?

Woodwork. Oh dear. Nice teacher, old school Jack Hargreaves type and if I had my grandad's carpentry genes, maybe. But I haven't got a clue and I couldn't care less. Someone's got to make chairs and tables and desks and fucking high stools and benches I suppose, but that's not me, buster! I wasn't put on this earth to make things. Hammers, planes, chisels. I am not an artisan.

Metalwork. Oh dear, this teacher's a bit, how do you say, let's just say he runs the Railway Club which over the course of my school days was a front for middle-aged men and young teenage boys to get away and experience a nature of sorts. Days out photographing impressionable boys. That didn't float my boat nor did drilling and cutting metal. Bollocks to rivets.

History. Incredibly dull young teacher. And we're starting from the very beginning of humanity. What do we actually know? That's not history, it's speculation. Who's to say the earth wasn't run by aliens who kept us for their entertainment as we hunted animals and cut them up with our primitive utensils? The aliens pissed themselves laughing for years until they got bored and pissed off to their own planet.

PE. Psychopathic teacher in white shorts. Ex-army. Made us shower before, after and during Games and PE. Took glee in our failure to climb ropes, jump horses, pull ourselves up on the rings. One day the cunt brought in some shitty 50 year old pairs of boxing gloves. What did he expect us to do with them? He thought he knew it all. The healthy life. It was his dream to go to America. When he retired he landed at the airport and dropped dead of a heart attack. We were in mourning. Mourning, I tell you.

So Big School was all work, no play, cramming in subjects till they came out of our ears. We were exam machines, there to get good results for the school's reputation.

My favourite subject was English Language. And I was Best in Class. I sat in the corner, furthest away from the teacher because I was the best. The worst at English sat next to the teacher and they would get hit regularly. Nice. The school had an annual anthology and a couple of us from our class got something in there. Shit poems, you know the sort. Teenage boys' poetry is the worst. Especially when you throw in some prog rock lyrics.

French was enjoyable, too. The teachers made it sound so easy. First we had a nice yet violent teacher who could turn on you if you were being disruptive in his eyes. Once I dropped a chair off the desk by accident and he brought his knuckles down on the top of my head with some force. The only time I was ever hit by a teacher and I still feel the sense of outrage. But other than that he was nice.

We soon got another French teacher, a young attractive woman who got us eager to get near the front of the class. Not only was she good-looking but French seemed to get easier. This beauty was magical. She just made it seem so easy. We were having tests and getting percentages in the late 90s. I got 99% in one test! You can't imagine the self-confidence eye contact with a beautiful woman, a smile, a 'congratulations' for being damn near perfect in her tests gave us. French was a wonderful language, the language of love and success. It wasn't until we got a proper French teacher that we found out how far behind in the syllabus we had got. She was teaching us baby stuff.

Ratco's Goes Punk

Phil Garvey's Aunty Maureen said there was a Saturday job if he wanted it. At Ratco's, where his cousin Lisa had been working since she'd left school at 16 a year before.

‘This Saturday?’ said Phil. ‘I’ll be there, Aunty.’

Ratco’s was where Phil’s mum went when she just wanted the odd thing she’d forgotten. A tin of pease pudding for Phil’s dad, something like that. His mum normally went to Nicebury’s, a further ten minutes’ walk away. It was better stocked than Ratco’s and the meat wasn’t as rank.

***

Phil turned up at Ratco’s at 8.25 on the dot. Lisa was outside already, smoking a cigarette.

‘Here he is, my little cousin,’ she said, through a cloud of smoke.

‘I can’t wait to get my hands on those tins of pilchards,’ said Phil.

‘Sarcy,’ said Lisa. 'Ratco’s stock only the best pilchards. Pusscatlyck. They’re bloody gorgeous, Phil.'

Lisa smacked her lips against her fingertips.

‘Well I can’t wait to get my hands on ‘em. Stack ‘em. Price ‘em up.’

Phil wasn’t looking forward to the day. He’d never worked before and he never wanted to work in his life. Yes, he wanted to meet girls but he’d seen Lisa’s friends from Ratco’s and they weren’t his type. They were boring and normal, not intelligent. Phil prided himself on his intelligence. He wanted a girl he could listen to his music with, a prog rocker, not a soppy girl who was into sentimental pop songs. Phil was serious about his music and if a girl couldn’t appreciate Steve Milton’s fretwork she wasn’t the girl for Phil.

‘Lisa!’

‘Who the fuck is that?’ thought Phil. The girl was a punk. She had pink, spiky hair.

‘Watch out, Phil!’

Lisa’s warning was too late. The girl had spat a greenie into his hair. His freshly washed long hair.

‘What the fuck?’ said Phil, pulling at the grollie. ‘What the fuck did you do that for?’

The girl who had come out of nowhere gave Phil a withering look.

‘I’m a punk. And you’re a boring old fart,’ she said. ‘A dinosaur. Part of the bloated establishment.’

‘You spat in my hair!’ said Phil.

‘Clever clogs,’ said the girl-punk.

‘This is Belinda,’ said Lisa. ‘She’s new at Ratco’s. Started on Wednesday.’

‘But she’s a punk. Punks are outside of society. Punk bands can’t play their instruments,’ said Phil.

‘I’m still ‘ere, you know,’ said Belinda, lighting a cigarette. ‘Who’s she? The cat’s mother?’

Phil wiped the mucus onto his handkerchief. It made him retch.

‘Ratco’s wouldn’t let you serve the public. Would they?’ said Phil.

‘Ratco’s are very forward-thinking and with-it,’ said Lisa. ‘It’s their new employment policy.’

‘That’s bollocks,’ said Phil. ‘Lord Reece wouldn’t allow it. He’s an old Tory.’

Lord Reece was the chairman of Ratco's. The firm had been founded by his grandfather.

‘But Lord Reece’s son is in a punk band. You’ve heard of The Knob Cheesers?’ said Lisa.

‘The band that got banned on the radio?’ said Phil.

‘They said the ‘c’ word on the Bill Munday Show,’ said Lisa.

‘Drunk old pervert,’ said Belinda. ‘I bet he wanks off to pictures of punk girls on the King’s Road.’

Two weeks previously The KCs, or Knob Cheesers as they were known by the kids who read the music papers, appeared on the Bill Munday Show along with a few of their girl-punk fans. Munday was obviously drunk and up for an argument. The Knob Cheesers’ guitarist was one Mickey Mucky, a skinny working-class urchin with a penchant for speed and fast chord changes. Phil had seen them on a late-night programme called In The Ear presented by ex-hippy now punk fan, Nigel Goodman. Phil thought they were a noise who had first picked up their instruments only recently.

‘Lord Reece’s son can’t be in The Knob Cheesers,’ said Phil. ‘He’s an accomplished session guitarist. He played on Brian Winsome’s Last of the New Borders.’

‘All I know is what we’ve been told by management,’ said Lisa. ‘Ratco’s has gone punk, a new punk ethos, they said. And it’s all down to Mickey Mucky being Lord Reece’s favourite son.’

‘I can’t believe Simon Reece is Mickey Mucky,’ said Phil.

‘He saw the light,’ said Belinda.

***

The store manager arrived and opened up. He was a 52 year old balding depressed-looking man by the name of Peter Durnley.

‘Hello, girls,' he said, then opened the door and went straight to his office.

‘Am I invisible?’ said Phil to the two others.

‘He’s been very within himself recently,’ said Lisa. ‘He's losing interest. He’s pissed off about the direction Ratco’s is going in. This punk thing is too much for him. Come on. I’ll introduce you.’

Lisa knocked on Peter’s door.

‘Come in!’ said Peter.

Phil followed Lisa in. Peter held his head in his hands, looking down at a ledger half the size of his desk. Behind him was a certificate awarded to Peter as Ratco’s Store Manager of the Year, 1972.

‘This is my cousin, Phil,’ said Lisa.

Peter looked up, looking at Phil with defeated eyes.

‘You’ll have to get your hair cut,’ he said. ‘The new punk ethos ‘n’ all.’

‘Lisa hasn’t cut her hair,’ said Phil.

‘I wear one of these,’ said Lisa, and produced a multi-coloured mohican wig from her bag.

‘Oh, no,’ said Phil. ‘You’re not getting me wearing one of them.’

‘What if I were to say to you your manager wears one,’ said Peter. He produced a mohican wig of his own from his desk drawer.

Peter put the wig on his head. Lisa put hers on her head. Phil was the odd one out in a room of fake punks.

‘What Lord Reece says goes,’ said Peter. ‘You may not like it, I may not like it, but when he gets a bee in his bonnet, it don’t go away.’

‘And then there’s the uniform,’ said Lisa.

‘Not bondage gear?’ said Phil.

‘Lab coats,’ said Peter. He went to a cabinet and took out a coat for Phil. It was a long lab coat, dyed orange with a silver anarchy symbol in the middle of the back.

‘Lord Reece’s design,’ said Peter.

Ratco’s logo was silver on an orange background. It was designed by Lord Reece’s father when the company was re-invented in 1927. Bold colours for a bold, forward-thinking company. Ready for the space age. Phil thought it looked cheap and tacky and these anarchy coats looked like an experiment gone wrong. Why associate a successful retail business with a worldview that there should be no political structure in society? How could Ratco's exist in a world without rules? Lord Reece’s father was eccentric but lucky with his logo. He'd tripled turnover in the year after introducing it. But the current Lord Reece had lost all business sense, surely?

‘What do the customers think?’ said Phil. His mother hadn’t been to Ratco’s for a couple of weeks so wouldn’t have known about the changes.

‘What do you think?’ said Peter. ‘They hate it. They’re nervous of the outfits and the hair. You can see the fear in the eyes of some of these little old ladies. All they read about in the papers is how the youth of today have lost all respect for their elders. And they come in here and instead of getting service with a smile they’re getting bad attitude. Staff spitting in their blue rinses. It doesn’t make my job easy. I’m used to running a tight ship with staff who would bend over backwards for the customers. You know that saying ‘The customer is always right’? Lord Reece has us thinking the customer is a 'boring old fart'. A 'dinosaur'. There is 'no future'. What kind of a message are we sending out? How do we expect to hold onto our customers? We used to be a respected part of the community, somewhere where local people could buy cheap products and not feel guilty for their lack of status. Now we treat people like scum.’

‘Wow,’ thought Phil. This was the manager talking, the man who was supposed to instil a sense of discipline into his staff. What had he walked into? Surely Lisa would have told his Aunty Maureen what was going on. But she never mentioned the punk thing to his mother at all.

‘It’s time I opened up,’ said Peter. ‘Uniforms on, everyone.’

Peter walked out of his office and headed for the front door. Phil and Lisa put on their lab coats and mohicans.

‘I suppose we’re lucky really,’ said Lisa.

‘Lucky?’ said Phil.

‘Lord Reece is anti-drugs. Just imagine if we had to take something, too. Though it might make the day go quicker.’

‘Christ, what have I let myself in for?’ thought Phil.

The Crown Jools

"ATTENTION!"


Jools Holland is the new face of The Brennan JB7, the "revolutionary CD player with a hard disk that stores up to 5,000 CDs" or "computer" as the technology-minded amongst us might say.

The advert in today's Guardian is as much a promotion for the talents of Mr Holland as it is for this revolutionary piece of kit.

"Jools Holland is a pianist, bandleader, composer, singer, television host, founder of Squeeze and the multi-million selling Rhythm and Blues Orchestra," we are informed.

As the advert is aimed at old people like me who don't understand that you can load your CDs onto your PC or Mac, I am grateful to now be aware of Mr Holland's talents so that I can now go out and buy all the CDs he has played on, sung on and composed for, load them onto my new Brennan JB7 and then throw them away.

Take All That (2)

SHARON: I don’t know what this world’s coming to. That furniture shop in Croydon. Those poor people. How are they going to rebuild their lives? That’s their livelihood gone up in flames. And the flames! The firemen didn’t have a chance of putting it out. Carly’s man’s a fireman. Gorgeous brown eyes. Lucky he don’t work in Croydon. Wouldn’t have wanted to be Carly watching that on telly, worried about her man.

DANNY: What Crouchy did was amazing. That’s how to act when you’re a star. I couldn’t believe it when he went for that haircut. Only a small shop ‘n’ all. Bet he had to crouch down to get in it, heh, heh. Then I bet the barber had to lower the chair, Crouchy being so tall. That’s what’s called giving something back to the community. I don’t know where he’s from, Crouchy, but he’s earned himself a place in the heart of every decent person in this country by his magnificent gesture. Imagine someone that big in the world going into a riot area and saying ‘I am one of you’! I’d like to think I’d do the same if ever I was to reach that height of fame. Give something back to the community. Say ‘I am still part of you, I will always be that little boy that grew up in a working class area amongst people that are the salt of the earth.’ They still are, most of ‘em. It’s only a minority who cause trouble. It’s the gangs ‘n’ that, gang culture. These young’uns aren’t like the gangs we used to have, your Krays and your Richardsons. Now they were real community-minded people, looked after their own, loved their mums. How can you love your mum if you go stealing from your own manor? Some of the mums were shopping their own kids, knowing they’d got to learn what’s right from what’s wrong. And then there’s that poor mum who’s getting kicked out of her home because of the actions of her stupid son. Where is the thought there? What was that idiot thinking? Didn’t he realise what he could be jeopardising? Bloody madness. It’s the lack of a father figure, that’s what it is. You ask any single mother what they really need and it’s a strong man in their life. Someone the boy knows to look up to. If I was a dad I’d be there for my family. Ok, I may actually be a dad, probable since I’ve knocked off more birds than Russell Brand. But if I decided to have kids, that’d be it for me. That would be a binding contract for life between me, the kids and the kids’ mother. I’m sorry but that’s the way I see it, black and white.

Dave's Wake-Up Call

Cameron this morning:-

"Do we have the determination to confront the slow-motion moral collapse(1) that has taken place in parts of our country(2) these past few generations(3)?

Irresponsibility, selfishness, behaving as if your choices have no consequences, children without fathers, schools without discipline, reward without effort, crime without punishment, rights without responsibilities, communities without control.(4)"

1. Sorry, Dave. Can't visualise a moral collapse. Unless it's like this.

2. Oh, the poorer areas. I see.

3. The Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown and Cameron years?

4. These are just in "parts of our country"? Or everywhere? Are you saying we get away with too much? We have money and things we don't deserve? We couldn't give a shit about anybody else? We're looking after number one? We dismiss the idea of society? How on earth could this have happened, Dave? Please, can you explain how?

Take All That (1)

DANNY: I’m Robbie Williams. I’m not really Robbie Williams. I just sound like him. I know I don’t sound like him when I talk but when I sing you can’t tell the difference. I’m in a Take That tribute band. We’re called Take All That. Brian, he’s Gary Barlow. Darren, he’s Orange. Lee, he’s Little Mark. And Ian, he’s the other one. I’ve been a big Robbie Williams man on the circuit for a few years now. I’ve done loads of work in the area being Robbie Williams. I was very popular at karaokes. They came to see me, the four lads, one night down at the King’s Head. I was really getting into being Robbie, and it was Brian, come up to me, and said ‘Here, we’ve got a Take That tribute act, and now Robbie Williams has rejoined Take That, we think you’ll be ideal fronting us with all your songs.’ I was a bit suspicious at first. But the lads invited me along to a rehearsal a couple of days later at the local church hall. I must say I was very impressed by the set-up. They were very professional. Being no spring chickens themselves they weren’t throwing themselves around onstage like the early Take That but were more sophisticated and mature and I knew straight away I was going to fit in with them. It didn’t harm things that we’re all good-looking chaps, if I say so myself.

SHARON: I love Take That. I didn’t get to see them at Wembley but seeing Take All That was the next best thing. Lee is beautiful, same shape as Little Mark, but with lovely twinkling blue eyes. I wouldn’t say ‘no’ though I usually go for taller men. I haven’t had a boyfriend under 6 foot except when I was 15 and going out with Gary the footballer who had a trial for Charlton. But Lee, I’d make an exception for Lee. He looks at you as if you’re the only woman in the room, his eyes burn right through you. Look, he signed this picture of his eyes. Aren’t they gorgeous?

DEAN: I saw Take All That in some cunting corporate do organised by the pricks at work. It was horrendous. I mean, you couldn’t pay me to even go and see the original Take That as they are shit, obviously. Hormonal women’s music. But this, this was an abomination. A total and utter z-list load of bollocks. I spent the whole night at the bar, drink after drink, drowning my sorrows, watching all those women waving their fucking arms, singing along with those talentless bellends.

DANNY: We got on like a house on fire and I was soon gigging with them, driving the women wild. I tell you what, being on board with these lads has certainly perked up the old pecker. I used to get lucky about once a month as solo Robbie but it’s every night with these boys. It’s funny how Brian gets the best-looking birds as Gary’s the least sexually attractive member of Take That. But Brian’s got a lovely voice and he’s not as boss-eyed as Gary. But he can do the eyes if requested. It’s a gift he’s got.

SHARON: I had my feet done today at the precinct. We’ve thought about it for some time, Carly and me. We’d just had a coffee at Starbuck’s and thought sod it, why not? You only live once. So we got up there on those seats and plonked our feet into the tanks. God, those little fish were onto us quicker than you can say Jack Robinson. It’s, I dunno, it’s not ticklish like you’d think it would be. They don’t make you laugh. But it is pleasant being nibbled. One of the little buggers was going at it hammer and tongs as though he hadn’t eaten in a week. That was a bit disturbing as I’m sure I saw a glint in his eye. I could imagine him turning into a piranha and actually start eating the flesh. I must admit I did start to panic for a while but Carly saw the change in me and held my hand and calmed me down. Carly knows how to calm me down when I’m having one of my turns.

DEAN: Those little shits should be strung up. And their parents, some of those kids were almost children. It’s the something for nothing generation. Think they can have everything given to them on a plate. When we were young we made do. My parents and grandparents were poor but you never saw them rioting. If my dad, when he was young, had done anything against the law, my grandad would have come down on him like a ton of bricks. You just didn’t. You don’t piss on your own doorstep. You don’t piss on anybody’s doorstep but if you have to piss on a doorstep you don’t piss on your own doorstep. They’re different nowadays. Living on hand-outs, hard-working people paying so they can laze around all day then have the effrontery to nick tellies and trainers us hard-working people work bloody hard to buy. If you want nice things you should earn the money to pay for them and you can only earn the money to pay for them by getting a job. Why don’t they get off their lazy backsides and get a job? It makes me sick that our brave boys are out there in Afghanistan getting blown up while these scumbags take our taxes and slouch around all day then play the big hard man by burning down a pub or a furniture shop. If you think you’re so hard, why don’t you take your hard attitude to Afghanistan and fight the Taliban like real men do. That’s a real man. They should have set the water cannons on them. Set the water cannons on them then thrown the book at them then locked them up and thrown away the key.

Aimless (3)

We found our dream house. A three bedroom semi. Large garden for me to run around in. 1966, a year of affordable housing for an ordinary single-income working family.

I started school again. Even though it was a small school I was uncomfortable being with all those children. But the teachers were nice.

The alphabet was drilled into us. The times table was, too. We started to read about those lovely children, Peter and Jane. Peter and Jane loved each other like only brothers and sisters can. I wonder where they are now? Do they still keep in touch?

The Peter and Jane books were published by Ladybird. A different Ladybird made children's clothes. That really fucked my mind, man.

I was co-erced into playing with the girl next door as my mum and hers watched on.

Eventually I made some real friends. Or, rather, they made friends with me. The twins were nine months younger than me and in the class below. They were cousins of my second cousins so I guess that's how we ended up together. I was a spoilt only-child and had modern toys which they liked to play with, boisterously.

I was already a West Ham fan as West Ham had won the World Cup for England. Bobby Moore was my favourite player as he was blond, handsome and he was the world's best player. My choice of football team wasn't based on geography or tradition. My dad had been a Charlton supporter, the nearest club to Bexley. I was a glory hunter, just like those Surrey Reds. All I could see in front of my eyes was a future of trophies and winning heroes, crying with joy. A lifetime of success.

In my second year of school, my mum fell pregnant. School had already obliterated our previous suffocatingly comfortable relationship and here was someone else to make us that little bit more independent of each other. My sister arrived in November 1968 and from reports of the time you'd think I was absolutely besotted with the girl. Of course I loved her straight away but I didn't have then nor have I since had a paternal bone in my body. She was my sister, not my daughter, right? It didn't mean I would love other babies or ache for Tiny Tears dolls to bounce on my knee. It just wasn't in me. Yes, I might have looked like a natural father at six years old but that was just me being a natural older brother.

Though I had the twins outside of school, breaking my toys, in school I made friends one at a time, just as my dad had. There was a boy with the surname King. My dad said I should never trust anyone with the surname King. Were these my dad's republican tendencies coming to the fore? He was right, though, the King boy was not to be trusted. But not because he was called King, Dad.

Thankfully I was never bullied by any of the boys. No, not me. I was bullied by one of the girls! She gave me a Chinese burn! I told my mum, showed her my wrist and one afternoon by the school gates my mum got hold of her and shook the living daylights out of her. She wouldn't touch me again.

Apart from that incident I didn't have any dealings with the girls. I didn't play kiss chase like some of those young studs.

In the year of the clackers we crowded into the shelter out of the rain at playtime and made a cacophonous noise. Knuckles were hurt and eyes were dislodged. I was very nervous of clackers as anybody in their right mind would be. But I didn't want to show it. I closed my eyes and clacked for England. Then England banned clackers and parents and kids like me breathed a sigh of relief.

More hand pain came with the conker season. Clackers were out but conkers remained as part of the playtime curriculum. I went to the park with the twins and we'd throw branches up at the massive horse chestnut trees, bringing down conkers in their thousands. Conkers were either put in the freezer section of the fridge along with the ice pops or pickled in large jars alongside the onions. You had to prepare your conker for battle or you'd be at a disadvantage.

My literary life was gathering pace, too. I soon grew out of Peter and Jane and moved onto comics. None of those namby pamby children's books for me. I read Whizzer & Chips from cover to cover but never considered myself a Whizz-kid or a Chip-ite. I was my own man.

I read other comics, too. But never the super-hero type or that prat Roy of the Rovers. Mine were more down-to-earth, prototype Viz comics. My favourite character was a boy who played football in his unwashed bare feet. You'd see the skinny white urchin in the bath, his feet on the rim, nice and dirty.

We listened to Peter and the Wolf at school which was meant to scare us and Sparky's Magic Piano which actually did. We went on visits to the Commonwealth Institute to see how the rest of our monarch's people lived and we went to the swimming baths once a week. I was scared of the water but luckily I had verrucas which kept me out of it. I watched from the gallery. On every coach trip we took I seem to remember eating my mum's cheese and piccalilli sandwiches. The sickliness of coach travel and piccalilli complemented each other perfectly.

We rehearsed for the school concert. The word supercalifragilisticexpialidocious was painted onto sheets of paper and hung up round the school hall. I didn't want to play the recorder. I fancied the Indian bells which I was given to tinkle every now and then. Why on earth would I not want to play the recorder? The recorder kick-started many a musical career. Satchmo himself started with this fine instrument before moving onto the trumpet.

In my last year of primary school I was given the responsibility of captaining the school football team, presumably to make me a bit more assertive, a leader of men. I never really enjoyed playing in organised matches the way I did in kickabouts. Kickabouts were more random, you got more involved, exciting things happened like running girls being felled by wayward shots. Silly girls shouldn't have been running, should have kept to their skipping.

In one match the cleverest boy in the school ran after a ball and ran straight into the air-raid shelter's iron bar. God knows why the air-raid shelter was still there, somthing to do with the cold war, maybe. So the boy's head was split open and there was blood everywhere. It didn't seem to do him any harm though, quite the opposite as he seemed to become super-intelligent after this incident.

I had no interest in playing games other than football. What's The Time, Mr Wolf? was fucking stupid. Kiss Chase was for the girls.

I remember just one fight from my primary school. And the fight was over music. Kid A thought Gary Glitter was the greatest artist who ever existed. Kid B thought that that accolade went to Marc Bolan. I was not fussed at the time and I'm not fussed now. There's room for all tastes in music listeners' worlds.

The build-up was more exciting than the fight itself. The argument and the anticipation had been ongoing for some time, at least a week, and a time and a place were agreed. The time: dinner time. The place: the playground. Children crowded around the two protagonists and a high-pitched chant chilled the air.

"Bundle! Bundle!"

The fighters went for each other.

Of course it was over in seconds as a playground attendant or "dinner lady" as we used to call any woman other than the teachers broke it up with little fuss. There was no blood, no black eyes. It was not conclusive who was the greater artist. Bolan went to his grave not knowing.

15 Movie Questions

Taking the baton from Tim, Annie and Rol, here are my choices. Feel free to do your own!

1. Movie you love with a passion.

Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train.


2. Movie you vow to never watch.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or any of that new American indie bollocks.


3. Movie that literally left you speechless.

The Vanishing (1988). Speechless and breathless.


4. Movie you always recommend.

Atlantic City.


5. Actor/actress you always watch, no matter how crappy the movie.

Bette Davis.


6. Actor/actress you don’t get the appeal for.

Audrey Hepburn.


7. Actor/actress, living or dead, you’d love to meet.

Groucho Marx, though I'd be shit scared.


8. Sexiest actor/actress you’ve seen. (Picture required!)

Irene Jacob.



9. Dream cast.

The Once Upon a Time in America cast.


10. Favorite actor pairing.

Was going to say Michael Redgrave and dummy in Dead of Night but one of them isn't made of flesh and blood. So, Burt Lancaster and Susan Sarandon in Atlantic City.


11. Favorite movie setting.

12. Favorite decade for movies.

1940s.


13. Chick flick or action movie?

A specific action movie: Clouzot's The Wages of Fear.


14. Hero, villain or anti-hero?

Anti-hero.


15. Black and white or color?

Colour. Especially the brilliant colours of the Powell/Pressburger films in the 40s.

Non-Stop Noel

"What's this shit?" said Maud to Kate,
"Deal or No Deal. See that state?"
"Fucking hell, how old is she?"
"Younger than both you and me."
"Greed for money puts on years."
"Look at those two sad old dears."
"Can't they put on BBC?"
"They'd have to pay the license fee."
"So all we get is non-stop Noel?"
"It's not like being on the dole,
They can watch all kinds of shite,
They've all got fucking satellites."
"You're telling me that this is it,
Noel Edmonds, Smarmy Git?"
"He may look like a fucking gnome,
But he owns this fucking shitting home."

Life on the Dole - A Part-Fantasy

Well, Geoff. How are you getting on on the old king cole?

Well, it's been six weeks now. I am dutifully applying for at least six jobs a fortnight as the Job Centre Plus demands, whether I want them or not. I don't want any of them but I don't want some more than I don't want others.

No fucker gets back to you. I say no fucker but actually one fucker did get back to me and I went for an interview yesterday.

The life was sucked out of the room. I was told the shit parts of the job which were many, I was told they had between 600 and 1,000 clients and I was thinking there's a fucking big difference between 600 and 1,000. I would be spending a lot of my time chasing up these clients to get their paperwork in on time then I would spend a lot of my time contacting clients to try to get them to take their paperwork back.

So I decided against this job and trotted along to the Job Centre Plus in the afternoon for my third fortnightly appointment.

"Since you haven't got any accountancy qualifications, what about this job?" said the woman seeing to me.

I said, that's in Orpington, a town an hour away by bus, an hour away by train, it would take me an hour and a half to get to work.

She said I was obliged to travel up to an hour and a half to work. Orpington was OK.

I said it was a 40 hour week for £7 an hour.

She said I was obliged to work a maximum of 40 hours for a minimum of the minimum wage, £5.93 per hour. She said the object was to get the jobseeker off jobseeker's allowance and into a job. She said if I'm low-paid I may be able to get other benefits.

I said you're only giving me £68 per week for 26 weeks. I've paid tax and national insurance for the past 29 years. I said I'm doing this so I get my full pension.

She said have you checked how much pension you'll be getting? Go onto the internet, type in "Google" and type in "pension forecast".

I said can you write that down because I don't think I'll be able to remember that. Do I have to turn on the computer first?

She said yes, maybe you could go on an IT course. A lot of our older customers have trouble with computers, how to turn them on, how to turn them off, etc.

I said that would be good because though I've got a computer at home I haven't got any qualifications in using a computer and a course showing me how to use a computer would be very useful especially since I bought it seven years ago and still haven't worked out how to turn the fucking thing on. And I have spent the past 29 years in accountancy blagging my way as I don't know the first thing about it so maybe I can go on a course to, I don't know, I don't know what's done nowadays with all these new fangled machines, did you know when I was made redundant some cunt nicked my favourite abacus?

"So what about we go for this job in Orpington?" she said.

Aimless (2)

I apologise if you were reading this blog a couple of years ago when a lot of the next few sections of the story were told. But this is the new, improved version!

Also, I am putting my podcasts on a new blog, latest one here.

Anyway, enough of that. The story continues...

My mum and dad met at the Embassy Court in Welling. This was the local place to see and dance to the bands of the day. This was my dad’s music, The Ted Heath Orchestra, big band shit like that. My mum was a big Sinatra fan.

My dad and his friend would stand at the front, close to the band, their necks jerking back and forth like pigeons’ necks, in time to the music. The equivalent of our later headbanging except there were plenty of women around in the dance halls of the day to admire their smart head moves and smarter Tony Curtis haircuts.

My dad was still doing National Service, in the Air Force, when my mum and dad got married. They lived for five years in my dad's parents' home. No room to swing a cat but it was the only way they could save up enough money to get a deposit on a house. In the end, my dad was lent most of the deposit by a man whose gardening he did. They were on the housing ladder and moved to Welling.

When she was pregnant with me, my mum worked at the Atomic Energy. Her best friend at the Atomic was carrying at the same time. A girl. We were the children of the future.

I was born in the cold December of 1961. A Wednesday's woeful child, full of tears.

I've still got the mark where they put the needle in. Antibiotics straight into my chubby little leg.

The first thing I can recall is riding my tricycle, legs pumping away like manic sausages, heading along the pavement to greet my dad as he came home from work, a packet of Murraymints for me in his jacket pocket.

I don't remember our dog. Dino was named after the Flintstones' pet dinosaur and his favourite meal of the day was a packet of my mum's cigarettes. The cigarettes were essentials. The dog wasn’t. The dog had to go.

Dino went to a good home and I was allowed my own space. I soon learned to play alone, happy in the company of Baby and Daddy Mugger, my two pandas. My mum often brings up Baby Mugger, even today. Baby Mugger was the child I never had.

My mum and dad were very close to their respective sisters and parents so there was quite a bit of visiting. I didn't enjoy the company of people outside my immediate family. They were friendly and they gave me nice things to eat and drink but I would rather have been home with Baby and Daddy Mugger and my toy cars. I loved the shapes and colours and feel of the cars and they would tootle along at a nice slow pace under my gentle guidance. I had no truck with those boys who hurtled their cars along as if they were machines of destruction. Those crashing, smashing little bastards were all around but not destroying my toys. Not yet.

When I was four my dad got a job as an engraver on the south coast and we upped sticks for Christchurch.

I loved Christchurch. My dad went to work and I had nobody but my mum for company. We'd go out for walks to the shops, get the bus to the seaside. My white body went brown in the sun and I felt more comfortable exposing the upper half of my body than I have since. I had a Batman outfit in which I ran down Bournemouth High Street, oblivious to the crowds.

My dad loved it there, too. He enjoyed the job and was settled in the house and town.
But my mum hated it. She wasn't making friends. She missed her parents and sisters. As entertaining as I was, I was not adult company. I wasn't due to go to school for over a year so there were no young mothers for my mum to chat to. She was lonely.

Two incidents stick out in my mind from then. I was scared shitless by the steam and whistle of a steam train going under a bridge we were standing on. And I was scared shitless when I was left alone in the house with my cousin one day. She got it into her head that there was an intruder in the house. Silly girl.

Despite those couple of frights I remember it as year of comfort and security. With my mum I was safe, happy playing by myself in the living room, listening to the sounds of food being prepared, rooms being vacuumed and the quiet druggy sound of the radio.

I had no friends and I couldn't have been happier. But my mum was going mad with loneliness. So we moved back home.

We weren't able to get our own place straight away. We spent the next several months at my dad's parents' council house. Yes, back there again for my parents. Even more crowded now and not good for anybody's nerves, especially since my parents had now had a taste of independence.

I went to the chip shop on a Saturday with my dad, watched the wrestling and checked the pools with my grandad. But my happy days with my mum, just the two of us, were gone. I remember being ill most of the time, lying in bed, afraid of the wallpaper.

Shapes moved. They became three-dimensional. They throbbed, heaved, backwards and forwards, side to side, span and spiralled.

I started school, a tiny school around the corner. I immediately contracted measles.

The wallpaper had a field day and the bastard measles perforated my eardrum. As my mum and dad argued, my grandparents argued, the one unifying force was the sick, weak child in the box bedroom. Come on, Dad. Hurry up and get a deposit on that dream house!

Staycation

As part of an all-out assault on your patience I have decided to produce some podcasts perfectly unsuitable for BBC Radio. I was going to do videos but couldn't bear to look at myself. It's bad enough having to listen to my own voice!

Don't worry, I haven't given up on the memoirs. The next installment will be along soon. Anyway, turn the lights down low, close your eyes and prepare for the sexiest voice on the internet.

Aimless (1)

My mum was born in 1931, in Cornwall. My grandad had his own coffin-making business. My nan was a housewife.

My grandad had been in the Great War. He’d been gassed in the trenches. He never talked about it.

My mum had an older brother and two younger sisters. Her brother used to catch rabbits and keep ferrets on his person, under his clothes. All four children were given 'opening' medicine by my nan. They’d get caught short in the fields and have to use dock leaves to wipe their arses.

My nan didn't think much of life. Her most common saying was ‘Life is hell on earth'. As her family were always pretty well-off in the scheme of things, there must have been a depressive streak running through her. She was certainly not one to think of the deprivations of others less fortunate living lives that could truly be called 'hell'.

During the Second World War, my grandad joined the army but was discharged quite quickly. They didn't want old'uns like him. He moved to Welling in south-east London where he lodged and worked locally as a clerk of works.

My mum, meanwhile, was living the idyllic Cornish life, far away from the action. I have an image of my mum running on Marazion beach as a German bomber flies overhead. Jerry looks down and waves.

My dad was born in Bexley in 1932. Born in the same council house he grew up in, the one his mum eventually died in. My dad’s dad was a labourer for the council. He could have been a footballer. Arsenal wanted him but he chose the security of a steady council job.

My dad used to say my grandad was as fast as a whippet and, being small, would run with the ball between big centre halves’ legs. Centre halves were giants back then.

My dad’s mum, like my mum’s, was a housewife. She was more cheerful than my mum’s mum.

My dad’s childhood was idyllic, too. He loved the countryside. A teacher once addressed him in front of the class and said he knew that all my dad wanted was to be in a field, alone, miles from anyone and anywhere.

My dad was evacuated to Derbyshire during the war. Bexley was close enough to London to be bombed. My dad loved Derbyshire. I never knew a place with beautiful countryside that my dad went to that he didn’t love, that he didn’t want to move to.

The war ended and my mum’s dad sold his coffin-making business in Cornwall and bought the house he was staying in, in Welling. The family moved from Cornwall for good. My grandparents knew there was nothing in Cornwall for young women. My mum would have had to marry a farmer, muck out for the rest of her life. The girls wanted more than that. They wanted work, glamour, lights and life. Life, not the slow death of the countryside. Not the sort of place my dad dreamt of.

Preface to 'Aimless'

You know what? I've done over 16,000 words now but I'm missing getting a response from you lot. Writing is a lonely business when you're just writing for yourself. I like to communicate. Oh, how I miss work and its cut and thrust. How I wish I were there now, stressed up to the eyeballs, listening to bullshit.

So I'm going to serialise my life story on here. Right from the very beginning. I hope you'll have the patience to see it through and not desert me as the going gets tough. When I've finished I'll probably self-publish it, something to show the nurse in the old people's home. She or he will say, 'Geoff. At least nobody can say you didn't live a life. Of sorts. No, really, it's very interesting. Honest, it is.'

My Life Story - Excerpt

MJ kindly requested an excerpt from my ongoing autobiography which I am currently doing instead of getting off my arse and finding a job like the benefit scrounger I am. So here is a bit I wrote yesterday, a taster for the best-seller it is sure to be, giving a glimpse of the tragedy to come which would divide our happy nuclear family forever, oh spare me the violins!

80s pop was beginning to break out of its gloomy shell and bright young things were getting more and more outlandishly dressed and fresh-faced. At about the same time in the NME there were articles on two new bands, ABC and Haircut 100. I thought ABC’s cycling outfits were ridiculous and the Haircuts had nice jumpers and sensibly high-slung guitars and were more becoming of the modern pop star. Michael was of the opposite opinion. So I chose Haircut 100 as my prediction to be the next big thing and he chose ABC. This was before either of us had heard a note of their music.

If we’d been kids, ten years younger and more boisterous, maybe we’d have had a fight to decide it like the Gary Glitter boy and the Marc Bolan boy. But we didn’t even have a bet as we knew pop music was to be enjoyed, not to get into arguments about. I have never judged someone by their musical tastes, maybe some light teasing about Cliff Richard or Wet Wet Wet, but as with your football team, I don’t mind who you support as long as you don’t force me to experience them.

So who won between the two bands? ABC were the more popular, I’d say, and made more money. But Martin Fry is still doing those chicken-in-a-basket 80s nostalgia tours whereas Nick Heyward is known as one of the greatest thinkers of his generation and is always being asked for quotes on a whole myriad of subjects.

I was totally bored with my course by now. I’d chosen the wrong subject for the second year in Econometrics with its particularly pointless equations. But I was still there, hanging on, not wanting a job. I needed something to tip me over the edge and make me give up.

It was the day I bought the 12 inch single of ABC’s Poison Arrow. I’d cycled to Cloud 9, all the way to heaven, and back and played it and added it to my growing collection of pretentious early 80s 12 inchers. It was a Saturday evening. I’d had my chips and was settled down in front of Match of the Day. My mum and sister were in bed and me and my dad were watching the football, him shouting out the usual ‘It’s “one-all”, not “one-one!”’ at the blasphemous commentators and ‘Don’t tickle it, it won’t laugh!’ at the hapless “fanny” players. My dad was quite sober that night. A usual night would involve me leaving him downstairs at 11 p.m. so he could eat his one meal of the day in peace, his boiled hearts or kidneys or other muck straight out of the saucepan he’d cooked them in. I’d wake up a couple of hours later to the sound of the television’s high pitched tone, I’d come downstairs, see the red dot in the middle of the screen and turn off the TV. He’d be slumped in his armchair, mouth open, snoring like a good’un and I’d shake him awake with difficulty and coax him to go to bed. Once I came downstairs after being woken up by the TV and found him drowsily pissing into the kitchen sink. When I told him he was disgusting he said his dad used to regularly spit in the sink and spitting in the sink was much more unhygienic than pissing in the sink. I begged to differ but I wasn’t going to make a scene.

His pissing wasn’t confined to the toilet and the sink, however. Once he had a slash out of the bedroom window and woke my mum up. I don’t know if he told her that his dad used to spit out of the bedroom window and pissing out of it was more hygienic, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

So, there we were, father and son watching the football, a happy picture of family male bonding. And the phone rang. He got up so quickly I guessed he had been expecting the call. And he was sober. I heard the mufflings of a short conversation coming from the hallway and he came back in and told me he had to go out.

My Life Story

It doesn't get much cooler than this



This is the life. I am spending my days lazing around and writing my life story. It's a dull life I've had but why would anyone want to read about an exciting life? They'd only get jealous.

I've done 10,000 words so far and I've got to my mid-teens. So 30,000 words to go and 35 years. Can I write that much? I'm going to need an awful lot of padding, going off on tangents, making up lots of dialogue. But now I've got a bit of time to myself I actually believe I can do it.

And where I used to think whatever I'd written in the past had been the finished product, I know this is only the first draft, to be played around with, fiddled with until I've got something to show the world.

Of course next week I'll probably be rolling on the floor in despair.

The Power Of Positive Thinking

So there we have it. 25 years in the same office, many happy years, though recently unhappy, I've been luckier than most.

25 years ago we had six full-time staff in our department. Now, we get a lot more work done with one full-timer and two part-timers. From next week, apparently, optimistically, that full-timer will be replaced by a part-timer. And that's me gone.

Computerisation is great. I wouldn't be able to do this without it, find new friends and show off in front of them. But it's replaced so many jobs over the years. Good, honest hard work is out and creativity is in. I don't mean traditional creativity like making music or art or literature, a much more modern kind of creativity, a knowing look, a bright spark in the eye, a brain trained in business becomes a brain that is so open to so many opportunities it can hardly contain itself within the brittle skull surrounding it. Why don't we do it this way? Have you thought of doing it this way? What about this, what about this, what about this? So many creative ideas flooding from the business brain, spreading over the boardroom table it's difficult to keep them apart. But do you want to? Maybe the ideas all interlink and organically grow into one big idea and we can see the big picture and we look up to the sky and look and look and realise just what a gigantic wonderful world this is and we're so lucky to be a part of it especially in this day and age when creative people are at the hub of a future that can only be sunshine and flowers and positive thinking is going to make it that way and this PowerPoint presentation is going to prove it, you bet it will.

Here Comes The Summer

Now I've got some time at home, thinking what I want from a holiday, a nice walk by the sea and, er, whatever else people do on holidays, so I go to the travel agents and say I want to go somewhere where you can have a nice walk by the sea, thinking somewhere with a long prom like Brighton. She says she likes Puerto Pollensa in Majorca, yes it's very nice there, or maybe Benalmadena on the Costa Del Sol from where you can walk by the sea all the way to Torremolinos if you so wish and I'm thinking do I really want to walk by the sea seven days in a row and I'm thinking, no, I don't really.

And I've seen my fill of cathedrals and ruins and mounds and ancient drawings and mosaics and fuck me, do I really want to go to a monastery at my time of life and I don't really want to taste alcohol I want to guzzle it down with gusto.

But I do want to walk by the sea and I will, on a nice day, get the train to Brighton and walk along the prom to Hove, turn around and walk back again and get the train back home in time to have something nice to eat and to guzzle down some alcohol and watch the bleeding telly cos that's what I like to do, OK?

Climbing Up on Hampton Hill

I have been feeling a little heavy recently, too much comfort eating, possibly comfort drinking, too.

So I was at my mum's last Sunday and I mentioned this to her.

"There's some scales in the bathroom, underneath the thing. You're better off bringing them downstairs and putting them on a hard surface. The kitchen's best."

So I went to the bathroom and got the scales from under the thing, took them into the kitchen and stepped on them. Thirteen stone!

"I'm a couple of stone overweight, too," said my mum.

So I've cut out a lot of wheat. Two slices of bread a day in my lunchtime sandwich. Then I started on the Ryvita. Ryvita, Ryvita, Ryvita. I mentioned my new health kick on Twitter. Beverley replied to me. Bev's alright...

@RyvitaCrunch Beverley at Ryvita @geoffwetblanket have you had a look at our website? Might help inspire you x www.ryvita.co.uk :-)

I suppose if I were a musician or an artist, inspiration would be easy to find. But being a dieter, looking at pictures of cardboard with white stuff on them doesn't get my creative juices flowing.

A week into my diet and I'm off the Ryvita and into Oatibix. The view from the top of Hampton Hill is superb.

1066 Country

Yesterday we took the train to the coast. I used to drive to the coast but I get too tired nowadays on longer journeys than a few miles.

The train to Hastings was air conditioned. The air conditioning smelt of sweat but what do you expect in standard class?

Our nostrils were not given a rest all day. Toilets, fish, chips, fish 'n' chips, fish 'n' piss, barbecued meat, the wonderful smells of our seaside resorts.

As usual in Hastings, I decided to head for the cliffs. Except this time I couldn't find the way up. My memory's not what it was. So we turned back from the full car park and headed for St Leonards.

Past the burnt down pier, the people's pier, we walked along the prom prom prom, past sunbathers, lone young men with guitars, a group of people singing Tainted Love, big men cooking meat on barbecues and many lager drinkers. It was St George's Day and your racist little Englander would have been disgusted by the ethnic diversity on show, families from differing backgrounds brazenly enjoying themselves on a beautiful day on a relaxed not-too-crowded beach. Of course the pictures in the papers always show young blondes on Brighton or Bournemouth beaches on work days with unseasonally hot weather or a sea of bodies on the same two beaches on weekends or bank holidays.

Brighton and Bournemouth, young blondes splashing with joy.

What's wrong with a tattooed drunk with 9% lager and a pitbull snarling at the camera, UK Subs and The Vibrators at the local pub and chips gorged in their thousands?

Show us as we are.

1976

1976 was a pivotal year in the history of pop music. Top of the Pops didn't speak to the kids, it was full of acts yer gran liked. Our Kid! The Old Grey Whistle Test was all West Coast hippy nonsense. Noodle noodle noodle. The kids' older brothers' music. There was nothing for the kids. Nothing I tell you.

Britain was ready for an explosion, a revolution, a movement the kids could really get excited by. It was about getting back to basics, the roots of rock 'n' roll, "here's a chord, here's another chord, now go and form a band."

Punk took the nation by storm. The kids were united and they would never be divided. They spat, they pogoed, they took drugs that made them spit and pogo, they called Bill Grundy a dirty old man, the kids were public enemy numbers one to a million and adults didn't know what to do, they were running scared, they were holed up with their James Last and Judge Dread albums, throwing their car keys into the middle of the room, hoping to God for some middle aged thrills with Brenda from number 7 as Brenda's children played their Damned single and threw up out of their bedroom window.

So a time of adult promiscuity and teenage anarchy was raging as Brotherhood of Man took the number one spot with a song about snogging a three year old and God you felt your whole world was on a knife edge as you taped Yes off the radio and snuggled in the corner of the room, big headphones hiding your waxy ears and your dad said "Have you heard about this thing called Punk? Apparently they can't play their instruments."

And you thought what a big deal it all wasn't and 35 years later you can't believe just what a load of shit the media comes out with about nineteen bloody seventy-six.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

The Wisdom of Kirsty Young

"Public spending is being cut by £81bn (nearly 6% of total national income) within 4 years, pushing up unemployment by half a million in the public sector plus adding nearly a further half million in the private sector whose jobs depend on public expenditure." Michael Meacher yesterday (thank you Vicus for alerting me to the existence of his blog, ooh ages ago now).

The Kirsty Young presented series The British At Work has been a load of union-kicking nonsense. The unions were "on top" till the 80s when employers got "on top", did they Kirsty? If by "on top" you mean protecting jobs and working conditions I suppose they were "on top" but that all went out the window in the 80s.

Kirsty proved she knew fuck all about what was going on in her own generation with her take on the lyrics to the single Wham Rap! and the image of the band Heaven 17 on the cover of their album Penthouse and Pavement.

In Kirsty's world, Wham Rap! was about finding a job you like in Thatcher's land of opportunity. Of course the song is really about the impossibility of anything but a dead-end low-paid soul-destroying job or the possibility of rejecting this and having some self-respect on the dole. Better to be out of work than doing long hours of shit for peanuts.

In Kirsty's world the "message they are giving..." on the cover of Penthouse and Pavement "...is very clear: BUSINESS IS NOW COOL AND SEXY."



Fucking hell, woman. You really don't get irony, do you?

Music and Me

I used to think I was going to be a musician, a writer of songs and a star. No I didn't, I was fooling myself. I haven't picked up that ol' geetar for nigh on 25 years.

But recently, what with all this new technology and whatnot, I have begun to have dreams that maybe there's something there, maybe I've got the music in me. I've downloaded an app for this thing which has three synthesisers, sequencer, etc. The manual's fifty pages long!

Then I think who am I trying to kid? Whenever I hear somebody's music, somebody who blogs or who tweets, I think, yeah, well, you're alright and I'm glad you've got a hobby and all that, but you're a better blogger or tweeter.

It's so easy to expose any old shit on Twitter, not much harder to do any old cock on your blog, but when you say to the world "This is my music" you really are laying yourself open to comparisons with stuff that actually sells. I know I haven't got a hope in Hell of selling any of my music because I just haven't got that star quality, the gift of writing a catchy tune, so I'm sorry but you'll just have to put up with my bollocking words for the next however many years. I'm not going to be the next Mungo Jerry whoever he is, so this is it, this is all you're getting.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

New App

I've got this new app, you see, which means I can blog from my iPhone. This is the future, man, using the one finger I use to point accusingly at animals.

"Did you do that, you naughty boy? You're going to be in trouble."

I don't know how this is going to turn out or what to touch next - it's either "Done" "" or the little camera symbol. I'm guessing it's "Done". Any ideas what happens if I press the other two?


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

A Hairy Escape

Last night I had a bad-trip dream.

I walked into some kind of market and was accosted by a woman standing outside a building. I seemed to be on a promise but she asked me to do something before I could go inside with her. She was a kind of hippy woman but not too smelly. I said OK I'd do whatever she wanted.

She went inside and came out again with people I could only describe as her sisters. Her older sisters, hairy and more smelly. Men appeared around me who looked like this...



They smelled to high heaven, too. They were chewing heavy wholemeal bread which I could see was what the commune were selling at the market as the bread was stacked high on a stall.

My new girlfriend handed me a false beard. She said I was to wear it before I could get access. The beard was made from hairy pubes, earth-mother minge hair presumably donated by the ladies present. Don't ask me how I know none of it was from the men but I just did, OK?

Then the eldest woman present brought a bowl containing a placenta to the proceedings. Don't ask me how I knew it was a placenta, I just did, OK?

I put on the minge beard and the placenta was handed to me to cuddle. Meanwhile, the men (see above) were watching me intently, chewing their bread. And the women looked at me with maternal pride.

So the dream ended.

But in real life, here's my latest film. Don't all rush at once.

Who Am I?

True Grit is an excellent film. I can't remember the John Wayne version and I've never read the book but it's just the sort of film that young teenagers should love rather than all that Harry Potter and Twilight nonsense but they won't of course because they've been brainwashed by the media.

We only go to the cinema once a year or so now. So it's good to see the trailers for forthcoming films.

A constant theme in these films seems to be identity. Something changes in the male protagonist's brain and he can't remember who he is or he can remember who he is but can't remember what happened to him or his identity has been stolen by another man or he has become another man with only his name remaining.

You can see his moronic face looking into space and hear his moronic brain whispering "Who am I?" to itself.

If only his mum hadn't forgotten to wash his PE kit with his name sewn into it.

Club Mellow

My latest film is here. I've given up trying to embed them and I can't upload this one to YouTube for some reason.

And as an extra bonus I've been sifting through the thousands of films on the site and actually found a funny one here! Xtranormal is not a social networking site so it's difficult to find stuff you'd want to see. But there have got to be some gems amongst the dross and I'm making it my life's work to find them.

The Olympic Stadium Fascination

One news item we Londoners can't get enough of is the battle for the Olympic Stadium. It's on the local news almost every evening and the selflessness of the owners of the two clubs involved brings a tear to the eye.

Here is my take on the ridiculous saga, including another appearance by my favourite actor, the sexy topless French footballer.

Designer Cake

That's it. I've definitely had it with football. I cancelled my Sky Sports subscription last week but I had to give a month's notice. Today's match was so fucking awful I would rather have been watching the Superbowl cheering on the New York Dolls or whoever's playing this year.

Anyway, my latest video is here. I'm not going to stop doing them just because you don't like them, you know!

Michael Rodd's Screen Test

Two new films for your watching delectation.

Here

And here.

One of them's even topical.

Sorry.

Hamlet Unchained

And here's another one.

The same actor as in the last one but this time with an Australian accent. Last week Steven Spielberg described him as the new greatest living actor now that Pete Postlethwaite has passed away. And who am I to argue?

Where There's A Will

This past week has been about wills. Betty's aunt died last Saturday and as with my dad and Betty's dad, no will is immediately forthcoming. She wanted to be buried in a dress which has mysteriously disappeared. And the man who helped her for most of the past eleven years wants his expenses repaying. This is all happening 170 miles away and really we just want to brush the problems under the carpet. Let's just hope social services aren't too overworked to sort things out.

So today I broached the subject of wills with my mum and stepdad. Yes, their wills are with the solicitor's. But which solicitor's? Good question!

I'm not letting you off lightly with will talk, though. No, I have another film uploaded to YouTube. It can be found here. I'd dim the lights first if I were you.

World Cup Willie

Hello! It's me again. The annoying tit who keeps posting shit animated scripts on the internet.

Still, at least I'm enjoying myself. It reminds me of when I did a serious scriptwriting evening class in the early 90s and I just brought in loads of short, crappy sketches. "Like Reeves & Mortimer," someone kindly said, but I like to think I was more influenced by absurdist theatre. Ian S Coe, that sort of thing.

Anyway, my latest "piece" is here. I've given up trying to embed them.

Happy New Year to one and all.

His Old Man

Tissues at the ready as I present my latest tear-jerking cartoon. I've even worked out how to upload to YouTube!

I promise I won't go mad and do one of these a week, but you know us boys and our new toys!



p.s. Sorry a third of it is hidden. Probably best to go to the link after all.

Boxing Day Blues

Christmas is a time for families to get together at the feet of the matriarch, even if you're feeling like shit, as I was.

We spent Boxing Day eating a mixture of salad, jacket potatoes, cold turkey and ham, pickles, quiches, pigs in blankets, apricot cheese, stuffing balls, mince pies, trifle, Quality Street, nuts, crisps and our own bile.

"I always enjoy this more than Christmas Dinner," is said every year without fail.

After dinner, the tv recorders are put to work. There's one downstairs and one upstairs.

"BBC1: 6.30, Countryfile. 7.30 Antiques Roadshow. 9.00 Upstairs Downstairs."

"I'll go upstairs and record Benidorm and Deal Or No Deal".

"What about Harry Hill?"

"No, I'm not bothered about Harry Hill."

They have 150 hours of unwatched tv on the recorder. They're going to spend the rest of the week catching up.

We, however, have caught up. Our Sky Plus box is free for the first time in years.

You can judge a Christmas by the quality of its telly. This has not been a good one.

Simply Having a Wonderful...Oh, please yerselves

I'm back!

And here's a little something for the festive period.

OK, it's not Guy Ritchie yet, but it's a start!

Brucey Bonus Tracks

I'm sitting here listening to Bruce Springsteen's The Promise, songs from the Darkness on the Edge of Town sessions, thinking Bruce chose the right songs to release back then when he blew my teenage mind, man. There's an urgency, a passion, a spirit in that album that spoke to naive boys and made us think anything was possible, that even owning a car might be romantic. Of course cars and young relationships could never live up to Bruce's billing but I still get a rush of adrenaline whenever I hear that album. The Promise is OK but not essential, a bit like the reality of the motor car.

***

I'm sure you were all riveted by the Golden Twit Awards yesterday. So pleased for Stephen Fry and the Greater Manchester Police. Fry's childish strops and the Force's kettling puns have been essential reading. And they had the gall to have "Public" awards for certain categories, as if the general public actually give a shit about nonentities' egos. Twitter's a great source of news and good for pissing around on with like minds but awards and books and sitcoms based on of-the-moment Twitter accounts? Get a life!

The Drinker's Tale

I walk into the pub. A big place with a stage where they put on entertainment. I go to the bar and the barman greets me.

"What can I get you, sir?"

There is an array of fine real ales. I can't choose, there is too much choice.

A bearded man appears to my left and says to the barman, "He's a newbie. He'll have what newbies have."

The barman pours me two halves of two different ales. Medium strength.

"You owe me 50p," says the bearded man.

Of course I don't.

I find a stool at the bar and sit alone with my two halves. Except there aren't two, there are three. Where did the other one come from and which are mine?

I spend the next hour drinking the beer. I compare and contrast, taking gulps from each of the three glasses in turn. Three glasses because I don't look a gift horse in the mouth.

I am feeling pleasantly relaxed. This is the pub I've been looking for all my life. Nobody is bothering me, nobody is annoying me.

"One two, one two."

Somebody's on stage. It's the man with the beard. He has an acoustic guitar. He starts to sing.

50p. That's all I ask,
To point you to the tastiest cask.
To cap it all you drink my half.
Do you see this fucker laugh?
When you leave you'll meet outside
Some friends of mine, you cannot hide.
They'll beat you to a bloody mess

And that's my story, more or less.

Limbo

I keep preparing myself for change but change never comes. I don't want change so I should be grateful. But this is a very strange feeling, the most weird I have felt in my life.

I never used to think of the future, just took each day as it came. Good or bad, the present was where it was at, the future would take care of itself. Now my head's in the future and the past. The present is running on empty. The future's looking stressed and over-busy or it's looking relaxed and easy. The past? I had it good though I often had it pretty bad. But I never had this feeling of strangeness.

This week I thought it was shingles. The shingles never materialised. A soreness of the midriff which lasted four days. That's it, I said, it's shingles, it's the stress. But the shingles never came. I tried not to touch my eye as I knew someone whose sight was damaged by shingles. But I'm not a doctor and I really shouldn't be diagnosing myself. It wasn't shingles after all. It was just the stress. The stress that comes not from overwork but from a lack of control.

I don't want change, change is the unknown. Frying pan, fire. Fire, frying pan. Just like that.

Whiskey in the Jar

It was my stepdad's 75th birthday last week. He was in hospital for some time earlier in the year and it was good to see him tucking into his Sunday roast. And his prawn cocktail. And his pudding. And half my mum's pudding.

My mum has a friend who has also been ill recently. But for her, living it up is not on the menu. Her doctor's told her in no uncertain terms that she must give up alcohol. Altogether.

Her favourite tipple is whiskey. It just so happened that her giving up drinking coincided with my stepdad's 75th birthday. What special gift would she give him to celebrate this landmark, considering he has driven her and her husband here there and everywhere for the past 15 years?

Three quarters of a bottle of whiskey.

He is a brandy drinker.

Perfect 10

The young woman giving out leaflets for Gym Box (remember them and their Chav Fighting classes?) has a jacket adorned with the words "Get the body your partner always dreams of."

So I pluck up the courage to ask her...

"What's the body your partner always dreams of?"

"James? He dreams of a body that's dismembered, caked in dried blood, bruised black and blue, oozing with pus, crawling with maggots and smelling to high heaven. But that's James and he has a vivid imagination which doesn't switch off when he goes to sleep."

One Is Busy Washing One's Hair

Her Royal Majesty has cancelled this year's Christmas Party for her staff. The party was an annual event until two years ago when she decided to make it biennial.

This year, said an unofficial spokesman, she "couldn't be fucking bothered".

An official spokesman said, "The Queen is acutely aware of the difficult economic circumstances facing the country and, given the current economic climate, it was thought that it was appropriate for the Royal Household to show restraint."

When confronted with the latter, the unofficial spokesman reiterated, "No. The truth is she couldn't be fucking bothered. She's an old woman. Prince Philip is an old man. They've met the great and the good over the years. They see members of the Royal Household every day of the year. They know they're not going to get a conversation as entertaining as the one they had with Michael Bentine in 1995."

Twitter Love

We met on Twitter. We fell in love in 140 characters or less. We have a common interest in music. We love festivals, that communal coming together of like minds. I play the guitar, Rachel plays the drums. We lived 140 miles away from each other but 140 miles is nothing in cyberspace. Within four months Rachel had moved down to London with her drums. Luckily one of my flatmates had fallen in love with a nice girl 140 miles away and was moving out. We formed a band. You wouldn't have heard of us but we're a bit like the Tings Tings although in our band the drummer's female and the guitarist is male, a bit like the White Stripes but not really if you see what I mean.

When we saw the advert asking for young thin white indie musicians who fell in love on Twitter we immediately contacted ITV. They filmed us holding hands in the park and looking lovingly into each others eyes. They filmed the band too but they didn't show the performance on morning television as they said it wasn't suitable for their audience. We feel a bit let down but we're going to carry on as we think we've got something to offer.

The Time of My Life

In a bid to make the evening more special we decide to go to the pub before the restaurant.

The bus journey is a mile and a half, two pounds each one way, a bargain. The pub we choose is one we used to go in when in this town, run by no-nonsense middle-aged women.

Oh well, not any more. Younger bar staff, loud male punters everywhere, swearing at the tops of their voices.

And the tellies are on. And here comes the football.

I see John Terry's gormless face in the tunnel. Oh well, Chelsea. I look around and see Chelsea memorabilia on the walls. Great. Just what I wanted.

Chelsea score two goals, one bloke shouts his appreciation. Most people are ignoring the football. As they should. Televisions, karaoke, live music and tv game show machines should have no place in pubs in a civilised society. But they do. They're everywhere, we're supposed to need these distractions nowadays. Ever since the 80s when it was decided by the Pub God that jukeboxes were not good enough any more and the hated video jukebox made an appearance with Michael Hutchence wanting to make us sweat greasily like him and Sting and Dire Straits screwing with our minds and starting us on the road to buying our Sky dishes.

So we leave this pub and head for another, distracted on the way by a pub that looks as though it's closed down. But it isn't. It's no longer the haunt of desperate alcoholics but it's now a Real Ale Pub, recommended by CAMRA, winning awards.

We go inside. There are Union Jacks everywhere, posters telling us about a Battle of Britain Day on Saturday, dressing up in Wartime clothes required, kids very welcome to come along as long as they're dressed as evacuees. That'll teach the kids what the War was like, except of course they'll be with their pissed-up mum rubbing Bisto into her legs and their paralytic dad moaning about how long it takes for him to get his willy out of his uniform to go for his half-hourly piss, not hundreds of miles away with smiling, welcoming strangers and glasses of creamy milk straight from the cow's udder.

Next week there's an Irish night when the theme is Green and leprechaun children with large heads and false ginger beards are welcome.

Meanwhile on the telly, we have Top Gear with the odious Jeremy and his mates.

So we leave this pub and head for the Turkish restaurant.

The restaurant is busy for a Wednesday night. Big men are getting stuck into big steaks, cramming chips into their big mouths. Out of the front window of this tastefully decorated very pleasant establishment I see the bookies over the road, bereft of customers, next door to the greengrocer's, which is next door to the Londis which doubles up as the local Post Office. The heart of the town.

The background music is awful 80s. Young at Heart, Eternal Flame, (I've Had) The Time of My Life, you get the picture. Pure shite but loved by everyone of a certain age, the age for coming out on a Wednesday night, stuffing your face with your partner.

So we leave the restaurant and, oh fuck, it's the bus: "RUN!"

The 6Music Subspecies

The Simon Armitage interview with Morrissey said far more about the state of my BBC sponsored demographic's establishment attitudes than about the plodding indie anachronism himself.

I feel like I should be part of the Mark, Lard, Armitage, middle-aged dry-humoured serious music fan set, but I just can't bring myself to raise my game and stroke my chin to a succession of bands that wouldn't have got record contracts in the 70s but are now lauded on 6Music's Pub Lunch With Graham Beard.

Talking about a new band called the Smiths, "Peel was never one for hype or eulogy, but somewhere within the lugubrious voice and deadpan delivery, I thought I heard a little note of excitement and perhaps even an adjective of praise."

Wrong, Simon. Peel's little note of excitement was his mind drifting to images of pretty young girls. He thought the Smiths were a load of old cunt and would much rather be playing something sent in by some unlistenable no-hope band recorded in some poor old deaf gran's kitchen in Uttoxeter.

One of the rules for my generation when talking about music is to drop John Peel's name into the conversation. As if we didn't have minds of our own. This nostalgia is suffocating and inaccurate and would send me to prison if ever I were to come across ex public schoolboy Phill Jupitus in the flesh and tempt him into talking about ex public schoolboys Peel and Strummer and wait for the sentimental "we're in this together" tear in his eye.

Armitage hides his not quite double platinum selling band's CD in his book of poetry gift to Morrissey. Morrissey is embarrassed as he forgot to bring his own 40 year old book of poetry Salacious Salford to give to Armitage and return the compliment.

I cringe for my establishment figures.

Gentle Giant

In the pub I overhear a man mention the words "gentle giant".

I hope he's talking about this...



Or maybe this...



But looking at him out of the corner of my eye I know he's talking about this...

Faith School Menace?

I love watching Richard Dawkins documentaries. The naivety of the man is supreme. He cracks me up. Richard brought his kids up to be questioning, skeptical, fully-rounded human beings. He believes that children have the right not to be indoctrinated by their parents or teachers. He believes in a right that doesn't exist. Just like the "enemies of reason" believe in gods that don't exist. How does a young child stand up for their right not to be indoctrinated by religious parents? And if the child can't, who will? Do we have an army of questioning, skeptical, fully-rounded humanist social workers watching CCTV footage of a parent's every interaction with their child? Does a questioning, skeptical, fully-rounded SWAT team storm the home and arrest the brain-washing mum or dad?

Young minds are open to the possibilities of the supernatural, things that go bump in the night. Mums and dads are there to protect their kids from evil ghosts, monsters and carnivorous wallpaper. They're there to cuddle and suffocate with their overbearing love. And if they have a god to help banish the evil from the home and protect the child, they will call upon him.

Maybe A Bunk Bed Would Be A Good Idea After All

I could smell smoke before I saw it. Someone was having a crafty fag.

My mother appeared. She was sitting on the armchair, her right hand hidden from me. I could see smoke rising from behind the right arm of the chair.

I asked her if she was smoking. I said she can't start again now, not after giving up in her 60s. People don't start up again at the age of 78.

She said she wasn't smoking. The smoke was filling the room and my sensitive nose.

I asked her again. She turned to me and regally lifted her hand to her face, as if she were Princess Margaret. She left the cigarette in her mouth and dangled it like a flat-capped commoner.

I reacted like Bruce Lee. I leapt in the air and kicked the offending stick from her mouth.

***

I woke up with a start. Betty seemed to be sleeping. But she often wakes up in the mornings with bruises on her leg.

Nothing Seems Right In Cars

The 60s boy next door has moved up from a Lambretta to a Mini. Today he is out lovingly washing it as we walk past. My filthy, sticky car is a few feet away. If I were a normal middle aged man I'd say to him, "You can do mine when you've finished." I'm not normal, though. Some cars are aesthetically pleasing to me, like the boy's Mini. But that's as far as it goes for me. My car stays plain-looking, unwashed and unloved, covered in tree and bird emissions. I ought to give it a once-over but that can wait till the week before its service.

Pack Up Your Troubles In Your Old Kit Bag And Stick It Up Your...

Googling only makes Eliza Doolittle depressed. Is she depressed about the state of the world? Conflict, poverty and "natural" disasters, Eliza?

No, it's the nasty people on the internet saying how fucking awful her music is and how she should fuck off back to public school.

Named after a cockney flower girl who provides wank material eye candy for an old man in payment for elocution lessons, Eliza was born into the world of the stage school female "artist" bollocks infecting current pop music. She is the granddaughter of Sylvia Young!

I hear Eliza's latest song every day on the radio at work. It annoys me so much I've gone beyond hate. I'm somewhere much darker.

The other day I blurted my distaste out loud.

"I've never heard this song before," was the reply, even though it had been played every day for five weeks solid.

And then, probably to spite me...

"I love it! It's really lively! It's got a really lively beat! It's so happy!"

What do you think?

Free Prog & Krautrock!

It will go down in history that the last CDs I bought were Peter Gabriel's first two solo albums. I had them on vinyl a long long time ago and my memory isn't what it is. I still like the first one but that's about it of Mr WOMAD's long, distinguished, boring solo career.

Our house is bursting with CDs, DVDs and books. There just isn't room for any more. Admittedly we have listened to the CDs at least once each. But many of the books and DVDs will have to wait for my release from that hamster wheel called work as Philip Larkin said so eloquently.

I suppose Spotify is my friend. I'm not particularly enthusiastic about it as it makes finding new and old music too easy and hardly rewards the artists for their art. But that's the modern way. They make their money from live shows nowadays. So why should I feel guilty? But I do.

I'm spending a fiver a month on Spotify's "Unlimited" package, free of those five-an-hour British Gas adverts. I suppose it's about time Rupert Murdoch got his grubby paws on it and it's incorporated into Sky Songs.

You Know This Much Is True

I was reading Gary Kemp's autobiography and, boy, did it go on!

Gary can write a mean, lean tune with concise, deep lyrics. But when he starts tapping those computer keyboard keys, well, did we really have to know EVERYTHING about his life? He only reaches his third birthday on page 147!

Three months I was at it, learning more about the Kemp brothers than I thought humanly possible and by the time they'd been through Bert Weedon's Play In A Day for 73 consecutive days I had just about had enough. I stood up from my seat in the train carriage, held the book aloft and shouted at the top of my voice "Tony Hadley is the greatest soul singer the world has ever produced!" and with palpable relief threw the book out of the open window just as we passed Millwall's football ground.

To cut a long story short I had truly lost my mind.

Middle Aged Fred

On Saturday night the conversation was about festivals and live music. I felt so old. I've reluctantly been to one festival: an awful GLC one where the highlight was The Three Johns! And my last gig was Air at the Brixton Academy, which was full of idiots talking all the way through as I kept going to the bar in frustration.

I doubt my cynicism is welcome when live music enthusiasts attempt to get me to join them down memory lane. I couldn't feel less at home if classic cars were being discussed. In fact in my twenties I would spend many hours in pubs listening to my friends enjoy themselves in this way.

I'm not good company. My glass is half-empty, ready to be knocked out of my hand by someone punching the air to Pendulum on the jukebox.